Most flash fiction communities provide a prompt and writers have a set period of time to post a story in response. Flash fiction communities often but not always limit story length (typically to between 100 and 1000 words).[1]

History

Flashfiction began on email lists and quickly migrated to LiveJournal communities set up specifically for the purpose of creating, posting, and reading such works. One of the first LiveJournal communities specifically for "flashfiction" was set up in Due South: DS_Flashfiction. It was modeled on existing drabble and short fiction challenge communities on LJ -- specifically Smallville's wednesday100 and Firefly's ff_friday[3] -- but those communities didn't call the form "flashfic" yet.